The present invention relates to the aligning of optical birefringent components. The invention particularly relates to the splicing of birefringent optical fibers, and more particularly to splicing that requires a particular alignment of the axes of the fibers.
The common technique of aligning the axes of polarization maintaining fibers at forty-five degrees in the related art involves a measurement of the polarization extinction ratio at the output of one of the fibers. If polarized light is input to a first fiber on an axis and this fiber is aligned with a second fiber at forty-five degrees with respect to their axes, light of equal power is launched into and exited from both axes of the second fiber. The power at the output of the second fiber is measured by having the exiting light go into an analyzer. Forty-five degree alignment is accomplished when the measured power is independent of the analyzer's angular position with respect to the second fiber. The accuracy of this popular method is limited by the available power from the light and may depend very much on the light source characteristics. This method is also prone to measurement errors because the analyzer must be iteratively rotated. Further, the method is very time consuming.